Chapter 2
Chapter Two
EVERYTHING HURT.
Elodie tried to sit up, but it was like taking a hammer to her ribs, so she stayed where she was, blinking her eyes open.
Nothing made sense. She looked around the room as best she could while flat on her back.
It was a hospital – the equipment gave that away.
The bed though was unlike any hospital bed she’d seen, wide and soft.
The décor was lovely too – butter yellow walls with modern art work, and the room was spacious, with a sofa and a little kitchen.
Where was she?
One of her hands was sore. She used the other to feel around until she connected with something like a small remote control. She pressed the button on it and closed her eyes.
It was too bright.
Her throat hurt.
She felt like she’d been hit by a…flashes of memory speared through her. The truck. The ball. Jack.
“Oh my God.” Ignoring the pain now, she pushed up to a sitting position, crying out in agony, pausing to take stock and then shoving the light-weight blanket from her lap. Her leg was in a cast.
It didn’t matter. She had just pushed herself off the bed and was trying to catch her balance when the door burst open and two nurses ran in.
They spoke in a foreign language. Italian?
Or was she not hearing properly? Her head hurt like the devil and felt half-full of wool or water, it was highly likely she’d done some kind of damage to her brain and could no longer process language properly.
She stared at them helplessly, fear tightening around her. Where was Jack?
“My son.” The words barely came out. Her throat was so dry. Tears filled her eyes. She lifted one hand and mimed the action for rocking a baby. “Baby. My baby. Where is he?”
Then, to herself, “Oh, Jack, where are you?”
They stared at her and she could have screamed. What time was it? What day? Where was she? This didn’t look like the Royal, but she could be in a different ward. Presumably she was. The only other time she’d been here was when she’d had Jack.
“Please help me,” she groaned. Panic was making her heart rate soar and her pulse was like an out of control anvil. “Please.”
One of the nurses, a woman in her fifties or sixties with blonde hair and a kind smile, nodded reassuringly, gesturing to the bed. “Sit. We help you.”
“My son,” she rushed, ignoring the suggestion she sit. “Where is he?”
“Jack?”
Relief was dizzying. If this woman knew his name then he must be here, too. “Yes, Jack,” she nodded but the action made her head feel like it was being split down the middle with a samurai sword. “Where is Jack?”
“Ah! Later. He come later.”
Come from where? Where was he? “Now.” She pointed to the floor to be better understood. “I need to see him now.”
The nurse frowned but nodded. “Bene. I call.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“Please, you sit now.”
Having ascertained that Jack was somewhere, and within calling range, and that he could be produced, she relaxed a little. Her body was in agony. The first rush of maternal panic had subsided and the pain she’d been conscious of before was so much worse now.
“Okay.” With the assistance of both nurses, she was helped into bed and eased back into a prone position carefully.
She was grateful to be on her back once more, though the other nurse, a brunette with dark, thickly lashed eyes, pressed the button that lifted the back of the bed a little, so she was half-sitting.
“But please, bring Jack?”
“Si, si, subito.”
The blonde nurse disappeared and the brunette stayed just long enough to run through a series of medical tests, which included shining a bright light in Elodie’s eyes so she winced a little.
“Bene.” The nurse smiled approvingly before she too left the room.
The mystery deepened. She had no idea where she was, or how long she’d been here.
Surely only a day or two? Where had Jack been?
God, how terrible. She could vaguely recall the look on his face as the impact of the truck had sent her flying, and he’d stared at her with his mouth wide and tears in his eyes and she’d prayed that she wouldn’t die, that he wouldn’t have to live his life without his mother – she knew that pain so well.
But then it was all a blur. She could remember certain things.
The ambulance ride. The smell of the hospital.
Then nothing. Wait, there was something pushing at her memory, but it was like trying to catch a fish with her bare hands.
She could feel an experience or memory but not bring it to the front of her mind.
Her head felt so groggy. Nothing made sense.
She closed her eyes, not intending to sleep, but the next thing she knew, she was being woken by the sound of the door swinging open.
She blinked her eyes open right as Jack ran into the room, and he was so handsome, so beautifully dressed, that tears filled her eyes – tears of utter relief to see that he was so well cared for, so happy.
“Oh, darling.” She reached her good hand out, but he ignored it, hurtling himself up and onto the bed with his formidable strength and bigger-than-average frame. His body collided with ribs which must surely be broken because she cried out instinctively.
“Careful, Jack. Your mother is not recovered yet.”
That voice! She’d have known it anywhere.
So quickly that her head spun and her eyes hurt, she looked towards the door to see Fiero Montebello standing in the frame, arms crossed over his broad chest, eyes staring at her in a way that was impossible to interpret but which, nonetheless, sent an ice-cold shiver down her spine.
It had been three years yet she felt as though she’d seen him the day before, so familiar was his face to her.
He was so like Jack, but it was more than that.
Everything about this man was burned into her brain.
She remembered him as he’d held her body to his, as he’d kissed her and tasted her, whispering Italian words into her ears that made her pulse hum.
Those were happy memories. Delicious ones that seemed to fill her brain whether she wanted them to or not.
Then, there were the other recollections.
The note she’d found the morning after. And six months later, when she’d gone to his house to tell him about the baby they’d made and seen him with his wife, arm in arm, so beautiful, so untouchable, so in love, and she’d known she couldn’t do it.
She couldn’t ruin their marriage because she’d been stupid enough to fall for his lies, hook, line and sinker.
He’d been married. He’d turned her into the ‘other woman’, and she’d always hate him for that.
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t form words nor breath. She could only stare.
And he knew! He dropped his hands to his side and walked across the room, his stride long and rangy, like a predator in the desert.
His hands curved around Jack and right as she was going to tell him to leave Jack where he was, that she needed the hugs, he simply repositioned the boy higher up her body, so she wasn’t in as much pain.
Reality pounded against her – the knowledge that this was a very, very bad sign. There was no way Fiero would be there unless he knew exactly who Jack was to him. How the hell…
“My name was on the paperwork at the hospital.”
She made a tortured gasping sound. Of course.
When she’d delivered Jack, she’d put Fiero’s details down, just in case anything happened to her.
It was a high-risk pregnancy that had resulted in an emergency C-section; adding an extra parent had seemed wise, given that she was completely alone.
No parents she could enlist, no friends in England, and even those back home, in Australia, so far away and long-forgotten.
She had been completely alone, until there was Jack, and then she’d found her heart’s breath. She’d lived again with his birth.
She’d completely forgotten she’d given the hospital Fiero’s details in all the overwhelming madness of becoming a single mother.
“I can’t…I…”
But Fiero shook his head. “Don’t.” His eyes though held a silent warning. “Later, we will discuss this.” He looked meaningfully towards Jack. “When you are well, and we are alone.”
She was so tired, her brain thick and uncooperative, so she nodded gingerly. “Fine.”
“How do you feel?” The question was clipped. Asked as a courtesy, she got the strongest impression he didn’t particularly care what the answer was.
So she lifted her shoulders. “Like I’ve been hit by a truck.” It was a joke, but she felt Jack flinch beside her.
“I’m sorry, mama.”
Her heart broke. “I know, baby.” She dropped a kiss to his head, the effort costing her as she had to bend her torso and her ribs were in no fit shape to do any such thing.
“You have broken your leg, sprained your ankle, broken your arm, cracked four ribs, but the main concern was your head, which was hit hard.” He spoke with clinical detachment but there was something in his voice that had her eyes going to his face.
Shock seared her – being here with Fiero Montebello after all this time was surreal and exhausting. She felt…everything.
“I can tell,” she muttered, lifting a hand and wincing at the outward sensitivity. Her hair was matted too; she didn’t even want to contemplate what she must look like.
“There was some swelling in your brain, but it’s gone down. The doctor has been pleased with your progress. You’ve had periods of wakefulness, but not for long.”
“I don’t remember anything,” she frowned.
“Some confusion is to be expected,” he said. “The doctor suspects it will take three or four weeks before you are more or less back to normal. The leg will take longest, but this hospital offers an excellent rehabilitation programme.”
“Which hospital?” She honed in on that. “Where am I?”
“In Italy. Rome.”
The words flashed inside her. “What?”
“I have a villa not far from here. It made sense.”
“How…when?”
“Two days ago.” His eyes dropped to Jack and she felt a welling of concern, and a rush of fear all at once.
“My God.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Why?”